Multiple perceptions of children's aggression: Differences across neighborhood,age, gender,and perceiver

We investigated how overtly aggressive behavior was differentially perceived by two types of perceivers, teachers and peers, as a function of student neighborhood, gender, and grade level. Participants (N= 765) were predominantly African American students in grades 3‐5 recruited from two urban public schools in southern California. The neighborhoods surrounding the two schools differed in levels of identified violent crime and economic levels. Teachers in the community experiencing more violence perceived student behavior to be relatively less aggressive and more similar across genders than did teachers in the less violent community. Peers in the community experiencing more violent crime perceived both boys and girls to be somewhat aggressive, whereas in the less violent community, boys were perceived as aggressive more so than were girls. In general, agreement between teacher and peer perceptions was stronger for boys than for girls. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Out in the cold: sliding sports and the Amateur Sports Act of 1978

For decades American athletes in less-popular – or ‘minor’– sports suffered from a lack of institutional and practical support from their sports' governing bodies. The AAU, in particular, failed to provide the funds necessary for athletes in the sliding sports of luge and bobsled to obtain proper training and opportunities to compete. By the early 1970s, the American Olympic effort was in chaos as athletes from the Eastern Bloc, taking advantage of their nations' determination to field the best possible teams, began to excel at both the summer and winter Olympic Games. In response, Congress authorized a presidential commission to study the situation and make recommendations about how best to improve amateur sports in the United States. The result of the commission's work, the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, reorganized governance of amateur sports to the benefit, particularly, of athletes in sports such as luge and bobsled.     

Related factors of the MTAI and the 16PF

The Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory (MTAI) and the Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire (16PF) were administered to 395 undergraduate teachers-in-training. The MTAI and the 16PF were compared using canonical analysis. They contained three related factors accounting for 41% of their total variance. It was concluded that teachers' attitudes toward their pupils are determined in large part by measurable personality traits.     

Instructional Tools in Educational Measurement and Statistics (ITEMS) for School Personnel: Evaluation of Three Web-Based Training Modules

In the current No Child Left Behind era, K‐12 teachers and principals are expected to have a sophisticated understanding of standardized test results, use them to improve instruction, and communicate them to others. The goal of our project, funded by the National Science Foundation, was to develop and evaluate three Web‐based instructional modules in educational measurement and statistics to help school personnel acquire the “assessment literacy” required for these roles. Our first module, “What's the Score?” was administered in 2005 to 113 educators who also completed an assessment literacy quiz. Viewing the module had a small but statistically significant positive effect on quiz scores. Our second module, “What Test Scores Do and Don't Tell Us,” administered in 2006 to 104 educators, was even more effective, primarily among teacher education students. In evaluating our third module, “What's the Difference?” we were able to recruit only 33 participants. Although those who saw the module before taking the quiz outperformed those who did not, results were not statistically significant. Now that the research phase is complete, all ITEMS instructional materials are freely available on our Website.